Vinyl siding is now very popular with construction companies and do-it-yourselfers. This siding has a competitive cost per sheet, or panel, and can be made by a known extrusion process to have a variety of shapes and colors. Horizontal siding panels, for instance, will normally be in 8-inch, double 5-inch or double 4-inch styles where the panels are 12 feet 6 inches long and about 9 inches wide overall. Vertical siding panels are made in 10-, 12-, and 16-inch wide pieces of varying lengths, with a typical size being 10 feet. Vinyl siding is sold in containers by "squares", where one square gives 100 square feet of coverage, and it is desirable to package the panels together so that one container carries two squares.
Modern extrusion machines can turn out a large volume of a desired style of panel per hour. Panels for use in the horizontal mode are sheets that can have a single or double bevel in their middle area (to give the appearance of clapboard when they are installed) and have at one, long edge a hanger strip with spaced-apart fastening holes through it and at the opposite, or butt edge, a small curled-in portion in the form of the hook on the letter "J" to interlock with adjacent panels. Although these physical features present attractive designs and allow for ease of installation of the panels, they also present problems to the siding manufacturer in that, until the instant invention, the process of packaging two squares (of the variety of different styles and shapes) in a compact and efficient corrugated paper container and stacking the containers for shipment has been very labor intensive. Without the present invention, it may take as many as five workers to, in a timely fashion, correctly construct a proper size container, efficiently pack it with panels, seal it, weigh it and stack it on a waiting pallet. And, even after all of this human effort, the sizing and appearance of any one of the final packages may leave room for improvement.
It is an object of the present invention, therefore, to provide a vinyl panel packaging system that automatically matches panels in combinations to efficiently and compactly pack two squares of panels into a container with minimum human effort.
It is a further object of the present invention to systematically and securely construct panel containers from corrugated paper blanks to hold two squares of vinyl siding and have an efficient, compact and, symmetrical outward appearance.
It is a still further object of the present invention to automatically match a pre-specified number of panels, as each is emitted from a panel extrusion process, to achieve a symmetrical package to facilitate efficient warehouse storage and handling and present a container of finest appearance.
It is a still further object of the present invention to automatically seal a container that has been automatically loaded with panels, weigh it and transport it to a pre-determined destination.